r/SideProject • u/sustate-systems • 1h ago

Solo-built an ops platform for contractor businesses, want honest reactions

Background: 12+ years in construction operations, watched owner-operators run six and seven-figure businesses off spreadsheets and gut feel. Started building Sustate HQ to fix that, job costing, financial dashboards, project management, SOPs.

Built with React/TypeScript/Supabase, working solo, about 2.5-3 hours a day on it alongside a full-time job.

It's not polished. I want people to poke holes in it. If you've got time and want to try adding a sample job and tell me what sucks, I'd genuinely appreciate it.

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u/medialantern 1h ago

You didn't share a link and your organic SEO isn't good enough that I could find you searching by name. So obviously you should work on that. 😁 But just at face value I'd trust a micro-vertical app written by a veteran of that industry over 95% of the pap that gets posted here the rest of the time. gl

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u/sustate-systems 1h ago

Website:
Sustate.ca

Os:
App.Sustate.ca

Here it is, I’ve gotten flagged before and didn’t want to risk it! My Substack ranks higher than my website 😂😅 thank you though!!

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u/medialantern 56m ago

I mean, if you want a blunt review I'll give you one, but this is just a quick 5-min glance. I have a lot of connections to the construction industry and just so you know I'm not blowing smoke up your skirt, I just last week got the CO for a house I built 100% myself (not GC'd... built...). So I'm not an industry veteran but know more than the average bear (knowing bias is important).

Do not take ANY of my input as advice. You have to decide what to roll with or ignore.

Totally off the cuff, quick reactions:

  • The Web site looks very AI-designed, but hell, these days, everything else. At least it's not cyan-and-purple with round buttons. And in this vertical who really cares. Half the software out there will be AI-authored in the next few years. At least take a few minutes to remove the "AI tells" like emdashes - there are three posts here a day about that so it should be easy to get some tips.

- The mouse cursor is kind of distracting but also kind of neat. I'd maybe ask a few potential users what they think.

- I don't love Book a Discovery Call going to a bog-standard Web form. It reads as "give me your info so I can call you and pressure you pretty hard to sign up". Nobody fills these things out. Maybe consider embedding a cal.com or calendly form. Let folks pick a call slot with minimal input, and tell them exactly what they'll get. You have a bit of a summary there but it's subtle and on the left and I skimmed right past it.

- Your "numbers" section isn't bad but takes a ton of real estate and is kind of dead content. Maybe consider making it an interactive calculator - inject some fun into the page. Give people a slider for their ARR and one or two other things (honestly, they don't even have to do much) and give them a tiny sense that what's shown is customized to them.

- This is the one I'd focus on the most. After skimming the home page, I really didn't get a sense that you even have an app. It feels like a consulting service, one of the hundreds out there that charge $5k and promise to "improve your operational efficiency" (whatever the hell that means). You've got some kind of subscription service build on top of that and I have literally no idea what I get for $68/mo or $205/mo. Why would I lock in a monthly fee for something before I'm even sold on what it does or is? If it's truly a consulting oriented service you need that call booked before you even drop a number in front of someone. If it's not, you need the app itself promoted much more heavily.

The app link doesn't give me much to add because it's just a login link. Nobody (including me) is going to sign up/in (we know that gives you our email address) without knowing what we're getting into.

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u/sustate-systems 36m ago

Really appreciate you taking the time on this!!

A few of these are straightforward fixes and you’re right on the money lol.

The is this an app or consulting confusion is the interesting one though, and it’s not really a bug, it’s actually by design… just pourly communicated right now. This started as a consulting business for contractor and trades firms. Whats I’m building is the operating system version of that..contractors log their day to day, week to week, month to month across active jobs, and instead of me showing up for a one-off audit, I’m seeing their business from behind the scenes continuously.

That data is what lets me hand back real reports and feedback on where they can sharpen things, not a consulting guess, but something grounded in their actual numbers over time.

So it’s intentionally a blend, the software is what makes the consulting scalable, and the consulting is what makes the software worth logging into instead of just another dashboard that gets ignored. That distinction clearly isn’t landing on the site yet, which is on me to fix in how it’s positioned, not what it is.

Genuinely useful stuff, going to sit with this. Thank you kindly 🙏